


Salt

by shadowsong26, TigerKat



Series: Serenissima [14]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: AU, Baroque Venice AU, F/M, Total AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5100158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsong26/pseuds/shadowsong26, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerKat/pseuds/TigerKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kara Thrace and Zak Adama meet for the first time.</p><p>[Arc 0]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt

She remembered everything about their first meeting. _Everything,_ from the way the deck swayed under her feet, her body keeping time automatically now, to the way sweat stung at her eyes and the small cuts on her knuckles. The taste of salt on her upper lip and the back of her tongue, omnipresent even when they were in port. The wind on her face. Her arms and back aching sweetly from a hard day's work.

She was sanding the railings. Not the most glamorous of jobs; it made her arms ache more, and tiny little pieces of wood kept getting in her eyes and eyelashes, but it was better than scrubbing the deck. Kara _hated_ scrubbing the deck. It reminded her of her childhood, long evenings spent on her knees washing the floor or the clothes or _something_ while her parents screamed at each other, until finally the ominous silence...

She hadn't been scrubbing the deck. She'd been sanding the railings, and Nicolas came up.

"Carlo," he said. "That can wait a bit. Come meet Zak."

She'd stopped, swiped a hand across her forehead, succeeded only in grinding the sweat and the wood bits into her skin. "Zak?"

"New," Nicolas said, and shrugged eloquently. "Bad. Commander's son."

Which explained everything Kara needed to know. She snorted. "Well, better get it over with," she said.

"Get what over with?" someone else asked, and she'd turned, and...

He wasn't handsome. Not really. His face was too square for that, his jaw too heavy and his nose too big. But he had extraordinary eyes, deep and blue, and he _smiled_ at her and...

Kara hadn't felt like a woman in years. She'd been Carlo since her sixteenth year, and she'd hardly noticed her body since, except for a few brief, anonymous encounters in the dark, and nothing for at least six months now.

She looked in this man's eyes, now, and remembered what she was.

"I'm Zak Adama," he said, smiling that crooked, beguiling smile. "I'm pleased to meet you."

She licked the salt off her lip, and remembered.


End file.
